HQ is in Vancouver, but there’s also a pending deal for Calgary in Canada. I’d drive that far to pick up my Solo but EMV says they will deliver. Officially, the nearest dealership will be Calgary, but Kansas City, MO, is about the same distance, albeit more complicated, with an international border between. BC wants to charge me $3.15 for crossing the Fraser River at Vancouver… It’s all good… I’ll get my Solo one way or another.

About Robert Pogson

I am a retired teacher in Canada. I taught in the subject areas where I have worked for almost forty years: maths, physics, chemistry and computers. I love hunting, fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, too.

50 Responses to Dealerships Growing For Electra Meccanica

DrLoser wrote, “The luggage space — even for something as smal as a camera bag — is essentially non-existent.”

That’s not true. Solo has 10 cubic feet of luggage space. It has no glove compartment but there are recesses in the doors within easy reach for a clipboard or smartphone or camera or documents.

So, again, false information is a poor basis for conclusions. I suspect documents could also be stashed between the door and the seat or behind the seat. Does one really need a camera bag in the driver’s compartment?

DrLoser also wrote, “You haven’t faced up to the fact that practically nobody else but you is going to want to buy one of these.”

People are placing orders daily. There are hundreds ahead of me and likely behind me too. The car serves two niches: commuters, which is huge, and errands, which also is huge. That covers 98% of what TLW and I do. On the 2% of longer trips on the highway, Solo will do for the vast majority of places I would like to go. TLW has not been beyond the range of a Solo in the past year, ISTR. I can drive anywhere in southeast Manitoba, most of southwest Manitoba and as far north as Swan River Manitoba along beautiful pristine forests and hills. I can also drive as far west as Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, where I might have family or business along major routes, Highway 1 or 16, The Trans Canada Highway or the Yellowhead Route, historic but well-travelled routes. Why should we keep a heavy gas-guzzler? For nostalgia? Nope. So, I and many others will buy Solo for its price, efficiency, low cost of operation and utility. It will not serve all needs but I don’t have those needs.

I want a vehicle that’s inexpensively built, operated and maintained, not a bottomless pit of money.

If I were you, Robert, I would go for the bottomless pit of money.

Chuckle. Yes, I know. Don’t bother to mention the subject of parsing.

But the obverse of a “bottomless pit of money” is precisely what you dream of, isn’t it? You don’t want to pay a single person, in the whole of the rest of the world, a single penny for making your life better, do you?

We are indebted to you, Robert, for your correction to Dougie’s original link. As we are for the observation that he cannot parse your gnomic utterances correctly. (You are right. He did not.)

Either way, however, the link makes precisely the same points about the non-existent Tricycle that we have all made … you you clearly couldn’t be bothered to read them.

* It is uncomfortable, even getting in and out. (Then again, you are a sprightly old fellow, so perhaps this does not matter.)
* It has no obvious resale value.
* It has no obvious supply chain.
* It is basically a kit car, sold at an objectionably high price.
* The build is shoddy.
* The luggage space — even for something as smal as a camera bag — is essentially non-existent.

And so on and so forth. It’s pretty damning.

You haven’t faced up to the fact that practically nobody else but you is going to want to buy one of these. I suggest you do. Without that demand in place (and please do not yammer on about $250 deposits — there is such a thing as “buyer’s remorse,” particularly when it comes to lemons), this … thing … is doomed.

You are also going to have to make up your mind as to whether this … thing … is a commuter vehicle, or else something designed to be driven 1,355 miles away. The time taken to charge this … thing … for commuting is not an appreciable advantage, compared to the Leaf. And only the insane would drive a pure electric (non hybrid) car over the distances you offer as an alternative.

Now, if you want to travel a decent distance (say, to relatives), and you are too much of a cheapskate to stump up for a plane ticket — I need hardly point out that you, Robert, are too much of a cheapskate — then you want a Yaris or a Jazz. And, in passing, you might want to advert TLW of the obvious Earth-Saving advantages of the Mitsubishi Outlander. (Yes. It is an SUV.)

But this is all purely theoretical, isn’t it, Robert? Because you don’t care about practical solutions. You don’t care about saving the planet.

All you care about is having some nasty little … thing … that can be driven up to the local Walmart and recharged for free whilst you rustle around inside the store for freeze-dried potato slivers at an acceptable giveaway price.

(Better make sure that Walmart has a free home delivery service, because I don’t think the … thing … is going to help you carry your sack of survivalist carbs home.)

My dictionary equates that term to miser: “A covetous, grasping, mean person; esp., one having wealth, who lives miserably for the sake of saving and increasing his hoard.”

That’s close but I don’t live miserably at all. I’m also not mean. I’m Canadian. Rather than increasing my hoard (I’m OK with that but I also love fresh fruit, hunting, birds in my yard, etc.), I see penny pinching as a way to buy more with my money. After all, I’m not going to be able to take it with me and TLW and the kids can take care of themselves…

I was out in my yard this morning, listening to some beautiful song of a bird, smelling freshly dug earth and planting seedlings of onion. Life is good and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

Grece wrote, “very informative; and Robert, you called it a hatchet job?”

Yes, and here’s a better link. Basically, TFA rejects the target market of the Solo, commuting. A Leaf can serve that market but the Solo does it better and more efficiently. He mentions that the Leaf’s 24kWh battery can be charged from 120VAC at home. Yes, it can but it takes much longer than the Solo’s 16.1kWh battery. That may not matter for commuting but it does matter for errands. Basically, the ranges of the two are similar but the Solo uses fewer kWh to go the same distance. That matters to me and it didn’t matter to TFA. Also, he undercuts the price of a Leaf by $thousands. You can buy a used Leaf for about $15000 but since there aren’t used Solos on the market that’s an apples to oranges comparison. That shows Leafs depreciate very quickly. One should include that in the cost of operation. The price of a new Leaf is ~$38K here, not $30K. Quoting a comparison of the models: “Every Genuine Nissan Accessory is: custom-fit, custom-designed and durability-tested; available for finance and backed by Nissan’s 3 year/60,000 km Accessories limited warranty when installed by dealer at time of your vehicle purchase.”

An example… Suppose I drive a Leaf or a Solo to Calgary, 1355km away. Both vehicles have a similar range on a charge but I suspect driving slower will give a bigger benefit with Solo. Assume ranges are 160km each. That means roughly, 1355/160 = 8.46 recharges. With Solo that’s 8.46 X 3h = 25.4h spent charging but with Leaf, 8.46 X 8h =
67.75h. That’s almost two whole days longer to make the trip. Does that matter? I’d say yes.

Yet, TFA sees Solo’s generic parts as a negative somehow… Chuckle. I want a vehicle that’s inexpensively built, operated and maintained, not a bottomless pit of money. Leaf’s range on 24kWh @80km/h is only 97 miles while Solo is getting more for less. Oh, yes, you can park two Solos in the space of one Lexus. Just park one forward and one backward. Having two doors really pays off parking like that. So, yes, it was a hatchet-job.

..individually inspected and certified for use by consumers in BC soon

Since when are BC consumers inspecting and certifying vehicles Robert?

So let me get this straight, Electra Meccanica is selling a kit car whereby the end-user must inspect and certify each vehicle themselves? Akin to say, bringing an out of province vehicle for licensing and registration?

Fascinating, so the end-user is responsible legal paperwork, whereby extricating Electra Meccanica from any liability, holding them completely harmless.

However, how does this fare with vehicle owners that do not want kit car? Where is the support going to come from?

The darned thing isn’t “big” in the first place. But no matter. There’s no point in discussing “crush zones” until the thing undergoes rigorous testing, which in the case of … well, they are normally called “crumple zones,” but again, no matter … typically requires at least 12 vehicles to be sacrificed in the name of safety testing, at least in the US.

Which would back up the retail availability of a Solo by about a year, even given the funding for such a thing, of which there is none.

Alternatively, Robert, you could just live (or die) with the “bouncing off things” version of safety.

DrLoser, missing context, wrote, “I like the idea of the primary safety feature being the ability to “bounce off other vehicles,””

The Solo has a large crush zone fore and aft. The bouncing off thing is about the passenger compartment not collapsing during the crushing. It’s a racing car driver talking about the behaviour of racing cars where everything goes to Hell yet the driver often walks away in crashes at very great speeds into walls and other automobiles. The Solo will be crash-tested to verify/confirm the detailed engineering calculations that predict this behaviour. I don’t know about you but in a crash, I would like to be slowed gradually and not crushed. Think of an egg race. The guy wins who limits the acceleration of the egg and doesn’t drop it. Two parameters describe survival, not one. The bouncing off is just one of the parameters. I’m certainly not an expert in understanding how Solo will crash but I’ve seen the design and it looks like great frontal crush zones and quite a rigid shell to protect the passenger from all kinds of violence. I’d still prefer a 5-point harness instead of a shoulder strap to protect necks better, but the Solo on its worst day is probably better than all but a few motorcycles which are regularly approved by government for release to the public. I want better efficiency/protection/safety/manageability than a motorcycle. I don’t need the protection of a truck like I was driving today. Solo gives me what I want and what is good enough for most people driving in city traffic with a small exposure to high speed traffic. Remember when cars had little or no engineering for safety? Deaths in low to moderate speed collisions almost disappeared with use of lap belts. Solo is far superior to that.

DrLoser wrote, “Saving the planet? It’ll always take the back seat to saving Robert Pogson $11,000, won’t it?”

Manitoba, where I live, offers no subsidy, just really cheap renewable energy and a recommendation by the provincial government that driving electrically makes sense with or without a subsidy.

Today, I drove a real gas-guzzler on the return trip of an outing to the country. I drove for a couple of hours at the rate of 24 mpg (CDN gallons). The usual driver, going considerably faster, got only 20 mpg. My Solo should get me 200 mpg in a similar constant speed trip over mostly level pavement with little wind. That’s all the incentive I need, not a subsidy on the price. The Solo will pay me to drive it.

Grece wrote, “The Solo is nowhere to be found! But just purchase the vehicle in Ontario and drive it back!”

It doesn’t work that way. ON’s plan is to pay people who drive electrically to subscribe to a research project for N years reporting on usage of the devices. One proviso is you have to live in ON. The list of eligible vehicles:“The vehicles listed below are eligible for an incentive under the Electric Vehicle Incentive Program.

There’s no reason the Solo would not be approved. There’s a reason the battery on the Solo was bumped up to 16.1kWh, besides range. That gets to a slightly higher subsidy in ON. That 0.1kWh is worth $3K more in subsidy.

I cannot find any reference to the Solo EV, regarding any provisional rebate. But I did find out that Ontario is a super-sweet deal.

Ontario is upping the rebates on EVs to a maximum of $14,000 through the revised Electric Vehicles Incentive Program. The sweet spot is five-seaters with big batteries (more than 16 kilowatt-hours) priced from $46,667 to $75,000. Find one of those and you’ll get $14,000 back in Ontario.

The Model 3, however, ticks all the Ontario incentive boxes: five seats, a big battery and a starting price of $35,000 (U.S.) which equates to about $45,000. After all that, the Model 3 might be the first vehicle to qualify for the full $14,000 EV incentive in Ontario, provided the program is still around when the Model 3 arrives.

The second-best selling EV in Canada, after the Tesla Model S, is the Nissan Leaf. It gets between $9,600 and $12,100 in cash back.

Its all good….CHUCKLE.

Even your own government agrees Robert, that the Nissan Leaf is the better deal. The Solo is nowhere to be found! But just purchase the vehicle in Ontario and drive it back!

The three-wheel Solo costs $19,888 and qualifies for provincial rebates of up to $11,000.

A quote from Grece’s cite.

Funny that, Robert. I don’t recall you mentioning a rebate that will drag the purchase price down by more than 50%. Most unlike you not to advertise your miserliness, but it does explain your enthusiasm.

Sadly, even given any reasonable schedule of depreciated value, you would still be better off buying a second-hand Leaf (which you can, right now) than a plastic 9V tricycle (which you will probably never be able to do).

Saving the planet? It’ll always take the back seat to saving Robert Pogson $11,000, won’t it?

EPA certification is trivial in comparison to the safety certification.

Well, Robert, if the first thing is trivial, but they haven’t gotten remotely near it yet, and the second thing is comparatively non-trivial … do you see where I am going with this?

I like the idea of the primary safety feature being the ability to “bounce off other vehicles,” however. Given the weight of the thing, and one of your presumed leisure usages, at least the Manitoban deer population will stand a 50-50 chance of killing you before you kill them.

EPA certification is trivial in comparison to the safety certification.

It’s not trivial Robert, it’s a procedure that must be done or the manufacturer will be fined. Regarding safety and according to Jerry, he states that the Solo will bounce away from another car instead of being crushed, resulting in a survivable incident, I am not kidding you.

Oh delusional wonder, nothing has happened. Production has not taken place, perhaps in your feeble mind you are imagining things? Has the first three units rolled off the assembly line yet? If not this month, when?? I bet units two through five won’t ship until sometime in 2018, if at all.

When ElectraMeccanica can produce three units a month for a solid-year, then I will remotely consider production underway, until then it’s all bunk.

Grece wrote, “Electra Meccanica is lying, when they say that they are working towards certification in America. There is no paper trail to be found on the EPA website”.

EPA certification is trivial in comparison to the safety certification. InterMeccanica knows the procedure. Lots of their cars are sold in USA. It’s happening. Production has started for BC deliveries.

Electra Meccanica is lying, when they say that they are working towards certification in America. There is no paper trail to be found on the EPA website, in fact, they are not even listed as are Nissan and Tesla.

Windspeed was 35mph. She struck the median, for pity’s sake. That bridge experiences much higher winds often yet only two vehicles have gone over the side. Speeding too… Limit is 45mph yet she drove 60+.

The closest thing Robert has done with CFD, is observe a Solidworks model of the SOLO on the Electra Meccanica YouTube page, depicting flow simulation. Not that it conveys any sense of REAL information, but hey it looks cool and that must imply that Jerry know’s what he is doing.

Solo is perfectly balanced with centre of mass right in the centre instead of close to the front wheel.

What a fascinating concept, Robert. Ignoring the obvious fanboi adjective “perfectly,” I presume you mean that the battery/engine/whatever is massive are equally distributed around the mid part of the tricycle. To be honest, I can’t even be bothered to look the details up.

Now, let us posit a lightweight chassis and carapace, and a rather fat old Canadian sitting in the front.

Not quite sure how the barycentre maintains on this one, Robert.

Oh, and that “close to the ground” stuff? Put it in a wind tunnel. Sometimes being close to the ground, when properly engineered, helps with down-force … and sometimes it just causes unpredictable and potentially disastrous turbulence.

Robin had one at the front, and can easily tip to left or right on a turn. Solo has one at the back and is very stable on a turn.

You are aware that Nature (and, specifically, mechanical forces on a scale larger than quantum) is basically symmetrical, aren’t you, Robert?

A backwards-facing tricycle, no matter how it is powered (although Fifi’s suggesting of a whacking great sail would add an extra element of eccentricity, otherwise known as moment force, to it), is not going to be stable.

Front or back, it’s only going to be “stable” if the two wheels left in line are, in fact, in line (with the direction of travel). Which they will not be, as demonstrated eloquently by Grece’s entertaining pictorial link.

Not so. Robin had one at the front, and can easily tip to left or right on a turn. Solo has one at the back and is very stable on a turn. Further, Robin is a four-seater with a lot more surface area for winds. Solo is perfectly balanced with centre of mass right in the centre instead of close to the front wheel. Robin had the engine and driver close to the front wheel. It was a silly design.

Published drag coefficient of 0.24, as good as the neatest sports cars. Clearance to the road. Performance on an actual racetrack. Video. Small size. Weight varies as dimensions cubed more or less.

None of that is actual evidence, Robert — in fact, it tails off into nothing more than wishful thinking once you get as far as “small size.” Light, two-wheeled vehicles such as motorbikes are notoriously difficult to keep stable in the presence of a strong cross-wind. I see no reason to believe that an underweight tricycle will inherently be any safer. Indeed, past history of such vehicles as the Reliant Robin (same wheel configuration, similar weight) suggest precisely the reverse.

Evidence would be proper, engineering-based tests using wind tunnels and such. Apparently you have no such evidence.

You need to ask yourself why do land sailing vehicles only have 3 wheels.

I have no such need. You, Fifi, have to ask yourself the following question: when is the last time you saw a “land sailing vehicle” travel backwards?

Never, that’s when. The wheel configuration of a land sailing vehicle is dictated (unsurprisingly) by its principal mechanism for both power and steering — the sail. (A feature noticeably absent in the Solo, I should point out.) Basically, the land-sailor sits on one side of the median and the sail is deployed on the other. (And the “center of gravity” has absolutely nothing to do with it. The relevant action and reaction are on the horizontal plane, not on the vertical.) A moment’s thought — which is of course a moment longer than you, Fifi, ever bother to give anything — will convince any sane person that the most effective underlying configuration for steering such a vehicle is for it to have a single front wheel.

So, nothing you prated on about with regard to “land sailing vehicles” has the slightest relevance to the Solo. And all the rest of your babble was equally inapplicable.

Published drag coefficient of 0.24, as good as the neatest sports cars. Clearance to the road. Performance on an actual racetrack. Video. Small size. Weight varies as dimensions cubed more or less. Area varies as dimensions squared more or less. You might think large size wins in proportion to size but then there is centre of gravity and its height… That’s why semi-trailers get rolled by the wind.

DrLoser this is partly wrong. You need to ask yourself why do land sailing vehicles only have 3 wheels. With 3 wheel correctly place centre of gravity is important. 4 wheels can in fact end up with more focused stress because it cannot tip and tipping allows reducing the wind force.

So tricycles have a set of advantages and disadvantages in high winds. Very high stability is a double sided sword with high winds. So you would need to wind tunnel test the solo compared to other 4 wheeled solutions it will be shocking how many 4 wheeled will be worse than the solo at staying at the one point.

Remember if a solo goes over on it side it halves it wind sail size as well as producing a shape that causes downforce. So a solo too high of wind is fall over and stay. Were at lot of 4 wheel will be slide sideways. This is where being too stable is a problem as well as shape were a normal car tips up its increased it wind sail size.

Most 4 wheeled solutions are in fact too stable this is why they get blown off different items due to side being a nice solid sail.

A car that hugs the road and responds precisely, like the Solo, should not have much effect from typical winds.

And your (fantasised) evidence for this might be?

Incidentally, respectable engineers do not talk about “typical” winds. Nor, of course, do they talk about Force 12 winds. What they do talk about is Critical Stress Indices, which basically comes down to a simple division of stress (wind, in this case) over design strength (stability, or moment force, in this case). Tricycles are not notably good at dealing with this issue.

And we haven’t even begun to consider buckling (in or out of plane) or even contraflexure. Why have we not begun to consider such things?

there is a market for Solo but it’s been hidden/neglected by the fossil-fuel industry and sycophants because it doesn’t sell as much product.

Interesting theory. A non-biased observer would assume that the “hidden/neglected” part would be based on the OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD We’re gonna be out of business!!!!!!

Your theory (and I shall charitably leave the “sycophant” bit aside), Robert, is that the Solo “doesn’t sell as much product.”

I have to admit, nobody will gainsay you that the Solo “doesn’t sell as much product.” I mean, zero is zero, right? Apart from that pyramid scheme of $250 deposits toward a $14,000 product, which is going to be very, very interesting when it comes to getting the next 56 Mary Kay pyramid scheme dupes to follow your lead.

(And incidentally, even if they do, you still won’t source a Solo. Just buy a second hand Leaf and have done with this drooling nonsense.)

Resistance comes in several forms, like acceptance of a model where the family vehicle must be capable of driving 700km on a fill-up. That’s certainly not based on necessity. It’s been 10-15 years since I’ve taken such a long trip except by air.

That’s not actually “resistance,” Robert. It’s blatant stupidity.

Let’s see how you can justify your blatant stupidity.

Ignoring your little trips to wreck several hundred young lives in the far north of Manitoba, and therefore leaving us with your shorter trips … can you give us a clue as to what vehicle you used?

I’m guessing a flatbed truck. I’m also guessing that you would have done better by sharing it with your hunting buddies, but you didn’t, because you are both parsimonious and possessive.

Dear, dear, dear. Robert, do you try to best Fifi on his only game, namely writing meaningless sequences of unrelated words?

That’s certainly not based on necessity. It’s been 10-15 years since I’ve taken such a long trip except by air.

You will never learn, will you? People don’t care what you have done. They care of what people do. For example, for me anything below 700 km / fill-up is basically a deal off. Perhaps it is closely related to where I live and the transport infrastructure.

there is a market for Solo but it’s been hidden/neglected by the fossil-fuel industry and sycophants because it doesn’t sell as much product

Except that there is. Scooters. If you look around in Europe, you’ll see them in scores and swarms. Cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, and give you a great millage / liter. There are also Electrical scooters, but people somewhat stick to gas-powered ones.

many replace every 3 years? Wait, that sounds familiar, just like the PC and its Wintel monopoly

Wait, wait. Weren’t you the one who takes pride of himself that he’s running a decade-old PC and has a ARM toy for a thick-client? What monopoly are you talking about?

Grece wrote, “I find it amusing that Robert calls for freedom of software, but at the same time advocating government socialism, while despising free-market capitalism and strangely call it a monopoly.”

While reliance on fossil fuels is not a monopoly in the sense of a single entity controlling the market, it is in the sense of a single technology controlling the market. That’s why there is resistance and barriers to adoption of EVs.

Resistance comes in several forms, like acceptance of a model where the family vehicle must be capable of driving 700km on a fill-up. That’s certainly not based on necessity. It’s been 10-15 years since I’ve taken such a long trip except by air. It’s just a “selling feature” widely adopted by the fossil-fuel market to promote useless consumer-products. A very high percentage of use-cases can be met by EVs with 200km range, like the Solo. Gosh, 80% of us live in or near cities and barely need to travel 50km in a day for work and shopping. Even that is excessive for those who work from home or live close to work. So, there is a market for Solo but it’s been hidden/neglected by the fossil-fuel industry and sycophants because it doesn’t sell as much product. After all, why sell a car that is trouble-free and lasts 20 years when you can sell gas-guzzlers that many replace every 3 years? Wait, that sounds familiar, just like the PC and its Wintel monopoly!

Barriers to adoption include charging locations. That’s well covered by Solo which can charge in six hours at a household outlet in North America. In much of Canada, every garage has one or more 120 VAC outlets able to do the job. For a small expense, many households can add a 240 VAC outlet that will do the job in 3 hours. Networks of charging stations have been set up to charge cars away from home. I intend to use them to cover my rare long trips by car. The fossil fuel industry set up this barrier by neglecting to include electrical outlets in many parking lots and “service” stations but it’s disappearing with increasing demand from early adopters of electric vehicles. In BC, the GREEN party even holds the balance of power. Think they might do more to push EV charging capacity? BC is already subsidizing purchases of EVs just to save the planet. More charging capacity is a no-brainer.

Thank goodness, adoption of EVs has been wide enough that many manufacturers are producing EVs or have announced EVs. Now there is “positive feedback” with EVs out there showing friends and neighbours the advantages of not having to buy fossil-fuel, changing oil, stinking up the place or scorching the planet… Every EV sold sells a few more. Solo EV is well positioned to ride that wave of adoption. It only remains to be seen whether or not EMV can ramp up production fast enough to keep accelerating. Judging by the interest in Solo and the simplicity of manufacture, I’d bet they can do it. They will have to or within 2 years others will. EMV is motivated and so are their buyers. The seed has been planted. Conditions are right.

I find it amusing that Robert calls for freedom of software, but at the same time advocating government socialism, while despising free-market capitalism and strangely call it a monopoly.

Nothing to be surprised here about, Dougie. Roberts just happened to be a fan of free software, only for the reason that it would come to him for free. Of course, since little else comes for free, he relies on government socialism to provide it for him.

On practical grounds alone, in fact, Robert should definitely prefer LSD over marijuana. Or possibly crystal meth. But definitely not marijuana.

His yard is inhospitable to plant-life. His roto-tiller Mk IV has probably already broken. He still has no wind-break. And he’s a rotten farmer.

But, think about it. The man is a trained scientist. All those obstacles disappear, when you’re just brewing a side-effect of strychnine! You can do it indoors! (Using nothing but electricity to power the heating, the pumps, etc. One has to stay true to one’s principles.)

A fifth career as an industrial chemist beckons, Robert! There’s even a box set of TV drama available to help you train yourself up on the marketing aspects!

At $8-$10/gram, you would think he would. I would grow it, but the monopoly is controlled by the State, and they only have given out a few licenses.

I find it amusing that Robert calls for freedom of software, but at the same time advocating government socialism, while despising free-market capitalism and strangely call it a monopoly. This loonie is has a few screws missing!

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